Major Changes in the Fiscal Year 2009 Budget Request

Major changes by budget mechanism and/or budget activity detail are briefly described below. Note that there may be overlap between budget mechanism and activity detail and these highlights will not sum to the total change for the FY 2009 budget request for NIA, which is $1,018,000 more than the FY 2008 Enacted level, for a total of $1,048,278,000.

Research Project Grants (-$1,380,000; total $686,445,000): NIA will continue to support new investigators and to maintain an adequate number of competing RPGs. NIA will support a total of 1,668 Research Project Grant (RPG) awards in FY 2009. Noncompeting RPGs will increase by 12 awards and decrease by $25,549,000. Competing RPGs will increase by 72 awards and $24,169,000. The NIH Budget policy for RPGs in FY 2009 is to provide no inflationary increases in noncompeting awards and no increase in average cost for competing RPGs.

Intramural Research (+$1,614,000; total $109,231,000): Intramural Research will receive a modest increase to help offset the cost of pay and other increases. NIA will work to identify areas of potential savings within the Intramural Research Program that will allow the institute to continue to achieve its program goals and accomplishments.

Research Management and Support (+$594,000; total $40,214,000): The NIA oversees almost 2,100 research grants and more than 500 full-time training positions and 100 research and development contracts. The increase will be used to partially offset the expenses associated with pay raises and other inflationary cost increases necessary to provide for the effective administrative, planning and evaluation, public information and communications, and scientific leadership of the institute.